Source Code

Here's a great example of a movie that looks like it's going to be lots of fun. As a caveat, I'm a sucker for time travel of various kinds. When I first read Stephen King's "The Langoliers" (I'm not referring to the abominable movie that was made from it, but the original novella itself), I was stunned to see someone do something really fresh with the idea of time. See, books and stories should be fun, too, and that story blew me away.

The premise here looks just as cool. Yes, it has its antecedents. On some of the sites, I've seen people comparing it to Denzel Washington's film Deja Vu, but it looks a lot less gritty to me. It's got a bit of Millenium in it, a little bit of 12 Monkeys, and even a little bit of Groundhog Day (or rather 12:01, which was a less comical take on the same idea).

Here's how the official site describes Source Code:

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he's ever known, he learns he's part of a government experiment called the "Source Code," a program that enables him to cross over into another man's identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.

More than the movies I mentioned above, this reminds me most of the single-season TV show Day Break, in which Taye Diggs' character relived the same day over and over, gathering more evidence each time through, until he was able to solve a mystery. But unlike that show, Stevens only has 8 minutes each time. Now that's a premise I can get behind. I definitely plan to review this movie when it comes out.

What this blog is about

Movies should be fun. It's hard to believe that actually needs to be said, but it's true. Different people expect different things from movies, I realize. There are people who like to be educated, or have their heartstrings strummed with tragedy. But they are a small minority. The rest of us go to movies to enjoy ourselves. To escape for a couple of hours into an adventure. Into the lives of other people.

For some movie-goers, it's fun to be scared. For others, it's fun to see romance. A slasher film fan can watch one slasher flick after another without getting bored, and without fretting about the plot being "predicatable". Same for fans of romantic comedies. There's almost never a real surprise in those, but those who like that genre (myself included) don't care, so long as it's done well.

I've seen a lot of movies in my lifetime. Most of them were fun. Some of them were devastatingly un-fun. Nixon, for example, was three hours of my life that I will never get back, and which I consider wasted. And I'm convinced that most people who went to see it did so out of a morbid fascination with the subject, or because of the names involved (Anthony Hopkins, Oliver Stone). But the movie wasn't fun. Not even a little.

In this blog, I'm going to review movies. Some of them will be new movies. Some of them will be old movies. Some of them will be reviews of movie trailers where the movie itself isn't even out yet (and in most cases, posts like that will be followed with actual reviews of the movie).

I'm open to suggestions of movies that you think I should review, but that doesn't mean I necessarily will review any given movie. If it doesn't seem like it's going to be fun to watch, I'm probably not going to bother. Because like the title says, "Movies Should Be Fun." Life's too short for anything else.